These are the stories of a Dutch engineer, exploring strange new countries, to seek out new life and civilisations, to boldly go where...well...many others probably have gone before...

May 04, 2005

The fat lady swings...

Well, it finally happened: First Flight!It was a wonderful day, a slight breeze cooled an otherwise blazing hot day (for a late april morning). The sun was shining, not a cloud on the horizon. A perfect day for flight...

Ok, I am a little late. First Flight occured last wednesday (27th April 2005). The event was largely publisised. Actually I think that was a great risk. What if things didn't go as planned? But they did, and even I king of sceptics was amazed! I work on Landing Gear Systems of teh A380 so I am pretty knowledgeable about what has been going on with the design of A380. And until the aircraft actually lifted its Nose Landing Gear off the runway, committing itself to flight, everyone was holding his or her breath. 4 hours later the lady wiggled her tail again and after a flyby passing over the runway at low altitude, it came in to land.Both take off and landing were the best I have ever witnessed. And I am not exaggerating!

Ofcourse I got some images of the aircraft.

The aircraft is moving on its own for the first time!

Close up on it's nose...

"Foxtrot-Whisky Whisky Oscar Whisky, you are cleared for take off."F-WWOW, also known as WOW... (yep, pun intended...)

A good image of the climb out of the fat bird. Note the corvette that escorted the plane during it's first flight.

4 comments:

haha, don't worry Azim, They do trickle in, just a bit slow. And since I got some new cameras, but don't have any results back yet (they are 35mm film cameras and a medium format camera), I can't put anything up for now. Also I am fairly busy with lots of things unfortunately :O(((

And I'm really looking forward to those new pictures which are obviously in development at the moment...Airbus did deliver a fairly good strike at Boeing with the A380.I for one think it's more beautiful then the 747.And ofcourse proud at you every time the landing gear hits the runway ;-)